


Family Christmas

by siggen1



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-13
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-29 03:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/682474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siggen1/pseuds/siggen1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What does the members of the BAU get each other for Christmas?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ in 2007, reposted for the sake of having a one-stop archive of my fic. Altered slightly to reflect that my English is somewhat better now than in 2007, and to fix stuff that has annoyed me about this.

_Someone once said, “The love of a family is life’s greatest blessing.”_

 

**I. Morgan**

"Hey, damn, girl, slow down!" Derek fights his sisters gently, trying to get at his presents under the tree. 

"Grab me one too while you're under there, will you?" his mother pleads breathlessly between bouts of laughter. Her house is never a particularly sad or subdued place, but when her baby boy is home, the fun and laughter hardly ever lets up. She watches him open present after present with the same glee as when he was five. 

From Prentiss (it really is quite unnerving to Fran, the way he refers to all his coworkers by last name, even when he’s not at work) he gets a Vonnegut classic, and Fran wonders if there might be something between her boy and this Emily. Doctor Reid gives him a box of an exotic kind of coffee and a mug sporting some inside joke that makes Derek laugh. From Hotch he gets an iTunes gift certificate, and he’s sent along a box of exclusive chocolates for the family too. Penelope gives Derek a box full of gag gifts that makes his sisters tease him relentlessly, and a nice sweater that the card promises “will cling to you in _all_ the right places”. JJ has gotten a picture of them from her birthday party framed. They look like an amazing group of young people, Fran muses. JJ so young and beautiful, Reid slightly uncomfortable in the close proximity of them all, but still smiling, Prentiss laughing at something someone outside the frame just said, Penelope positively glowing with well-being, and her boy, beautiful, smiling and happy. Just like he is now.

The only times he's stopped smiling all week was when he briefly told them about Penelope getting injured, and when he silently, without explanation, got dressed to go with Fran to Midnight Mass. It was good to have him there, but she’s curious as to what it’s all about. When her boy emerges from the scuffle around and under the tree for the sixth time, again with one present for her and one for him, the answer is clear. The new agent on their team, Rossi, has given Morgan a book, called ‘Where Is God When It Hurts?’. She knows that particular book; she has a copy in her nightstand. She doesn’t know how her boy found God again, but she’s glad. 

 

**II. Reid**

When Garcia finds a ridiculously expensive first edition of a book Reid has mentioned in passing that he and his mother read together when he was little, she buys it, completely on a whim. She mentions it to Morgan, and he doesn’t let up until she tells him what she paid for it. When she does, he goes straight to the bullpen and suggests to JJ and Prentiss that they all pitch in and make it their Christmas present to Reid. Garcia doesn’t know how Hotch gets wind of it, but a couple of hours later he’s leaning on the doorframe of her office, smiling wryly and asking if he can get in on it. He doesn’t say –- and Garcia pretends not to know –- that Haley and Gideon used to make suggestions for what he should get for the team, and Hotch is lost without them. 

When Reid sits with his mother in the sanitarium and opens the present that he already knows is a book –- that shape can hardly be anything else, and what would the team get him besides a book? –- he reasons that it's a good thing his mother has one of her bad days and there's no one else in the lounge - he can't seem to stop the tears creeping down his cheeks. 

**III. Prentiss**

Emily has dinner with her mother on Christmas Eve, and spends the night there. It’s strange, they haven’t done this is years, but when she gets up Christmas morning, she feels eight years old again. She puts on a robe and goes downstairs to find Elizabeth is already up, setting out breakfast on the coffee table. 

“I thought we could open presents while we eat. The way we used to.” 

Ambassador Prentiss smiles shakily, visibly unsure what her daughter thinks of this, of her, and seeking her approval. Emily smiles back. 

“I'd like that.” 

JJ and Garcia have bought her two lovely sweaters, one cerise and one black, there’s a small, framed picture of the three of them (that would be JJ’s work), and a vibrator she doesn’t take out of the box (and she can imagine Garcia giggling over that one), because even though Elizabeth is a single woman, Emily doesn’t think she’ll be very amused by that particular item. Hotch has gotten her a bottle of wine, a CD with jazz music (how did he know she liked jazz?) and a box of chocolates “to share with Ambassador Prentiss”. From Reid and Morgan she gets an exquisite vase that she once pointed out to Reid in a magazine as an example of great design, and a Vonnegut paperback is thrown in the box, too. Her mother sees the title, and looks at Emily.

“You still read those?” She sounds genuinely interested, and after hesitating slightly, Emily tells her mother about Vonnegut, so passionately and vividly that Elizabeth asks to borrow some of her books later. Emily hands her the one she just unwrapped, and finds herself something else in the bookcase, and they while away the morning and the day in pleasant silence, encased in respective universes. 

**IV. JJ**

Christmas morning is chaotic in the Jareau household. It’s a big, close-knit family, and on Christmas Eve they all pour into their parents’ house and fill it to the brim for a few days. JJ stays in the background as The Opening Of The Presents commences; She learned long ago not to stand between small children and their Christmas presents, so she waits until the kids have gotten their stuff, and are battling each other to find out who can make the most noise with their new toys in the other living room. She has quietly dubbed that ‘the golden hour’; they push the door to the kids’ room almost shut, and then they sit together, Mom and Dad Jareau, Jennifer, her siblings and brothers- and sisters-in-law, each with a cup of coffee, and open their presents calmly –- sometimes not so calmly –- thank each other properly for every gift, and take the time to appreciate everything. 

Garcia gives her a CD, a book and a beautiful letter that makes her tear up from the first line. Em has bought two sweet little figurines for her collection and a very pretty (and very fake) gem necklace they admired in a store window on their way home from a bar once. Morgan gives her a DVD, and a box of her favorite candy (taffy, and she can’t remember when she ever told him that) and Reid gives her Redskins tickets with a promise that she doesn’t have to take him (she will, though, she had a blast the last time), and Hotch gives her chocolate to share and two books. One is strictly business, about coping with a job in law enforcement (which is probably as close as Hotch will ever get to actually talking to her about shooting that asshole Jason Battle), but the other one is a great and smart little novel, which she thinks he must have gotten from a bestseller list, because there is no way a man's man like Hotch has read a book that…girly. (Although if he has, he’s way more sensitive than JJ has ever given him credit for.)

None of the others get gifts from their colleagues, certainly not from all of them, and JJ muses that it might be a sign that she works too much when her co-workers are the ones who give her the most thoughtful gifts, not her family. 

**V. Hotch**

Hotch is alone on Christmas day, and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. He spent some time with Jack the morning of Christmas Eve, but Jessica and Haley are going to their parents’ for Christmas, and taking Jack with them. Haley said he could come, but he knows damn well he’s _persona non grata_ in the Brooks household at the moment, so he stays home instead. Sean is working, and his mother is in Bermuda or somewhere with “the girls”, her god-awful bridge friends, so it’s just Aaron.

When he gets up on Christmas morning he makes himself a hearty breakfast and sits down with the gifts. Tie from Garcia -– at this point in his life he can recognize a tie-sized box from a hundred paces –- with colors and patterns that ensures that he’ll never ever wear it, and a note that assures him that she knows this, but that she really thinks he ought to get some color in his life. She’s probably right, and he smiles at the sentiment. A fountain pen from Reid, a photo from Prentiss and JJ –- he never knew they could pick something he’d like, but he really does like it -– and a DVD from Morgan. It’s an action movie he’s never seen, so he puts it on and watches half-heartedly while he starts cooking lunch for Dave and himself. When the movie ends, the silence is overpowering, and he puts on some music, trying to drown it out. Then the phone rings, and it’s Haley.

“Jack wanted to say ‘Merry Christmas’ to Daddy.”

Hotch tries not to cry as he listens to his son stumble out the syllables to spell ‘Merry Christmas’, but when Haley takes the phone again, she can obviously hear it, because her voice is soft with compassion as she, too, wishes him a merry Christmas and says goodbye.

**VI. Garcia**

Garcia is alone on Christmas too, her brothers are tied up where they are and she didn’t feel like traveling this year. She’s not really sad about it, though; she loves her brothers, but they don’t really have all that much in common anymore. Besides, she has a couch full of presents from her extended family.

JJ and Em have really gone all out with their present for her; in the huge box she finds several books, a skirt that will be awesome with her black tights and pink fishnets, lots of hairclips and scrunchies, and a picture of the girls together. It feels really nice and really right to put it on the shelf next to the photo of her parents. Morgan has gotten her bath soaps and a scented candle, and Garcia swears if she didn’t know any better she’d say he was gay. Reid, sweet Reid, gives her a copy of ‘HTML for Dummies’ as a gag gift, and a memory card reader she’s been dropping subtle hints about for months. From Hotch she gets a book about famous strong women -- Joan of Arc, the suffragettes and the likes -- and inside the cover he’s written a personal note that makes her cry a little. 

Suddenly, the first day of work after Christmas feels such a long way ahead.

**VII. Rossi**

Dave has a hard time figuring out what to get Hotch for Christmas, if indeed he is to get him anything at all. Finally he decides that he should buy something in case Hotch gets him a gift. He picks out Max Ryan’s latest, on the mechanics of narcissism and hero homocide. Hotch gives Dave the exact same book. When they realize this on Christmas Day they both smile a little to themselves, but they don't mention it when they meet at Hotch’s place for lunch later in the day. 

Nobody else on the team gives him anything, and he didn’t expect them to, so when he finds a delicately wrapped Moleskine notebook on his desk on the first day of work after Christmas, he’s puzzled. When he exits his office and scopes out the bullpen, Morgan meets his eyes and nods subtly. Dave smiles, and brings the notebook with him to the next briefing. 

 

_Johann Schiller wrote, “It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.”_


End file.
